


can't live on prayers like that

by ceruleanVulpine



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Mind Control, Reading Aloud, Unhealthy Relationships, not a happy ending. not a good timeline for these boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-04 19:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15847572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceruleanVulpine/pseuds/ceruleanVulpine
Summary: Jon thinks, clearly,that’s your question answered, you can leave now,and then doesn’t say it. It doesn’t make sense, but he feels fractionally more human: still awful, but it’s a little easier, now, to ignore the feeling of something pressing on him through the skin of the world. Maybe that dread can’t coexist with something as thoroughly normal as being irritated with Martin—“I could read it?”---Martin helps out reading statements, for reasons he won't explain. Jon has never been able to resist pulling at loose threads. The Eye witnesses, as usual.(Set after MAG94, and mostly written right after listening to that part; therefore there are a couple of accidental collisions with things that happen later in canon, despite my best efforts, mostly because I *somehow* underestimated how dense Jon is about some things.)





	can't live on prayers like that

“You sure you don’t want to lie down for a bit? I told you, you can use my bed, it’s fine.” 

Jon looks up from his laptop, wincing as the motion sets the room tilting. “And I told you, I’m perfectly alright.” 

He sets the computer aside, which the Admiral takes as his cue to leap onto his lap, claws flexing. Jon tips him onto the carpet. Admiral, betrayed, throws himself at Georgie, who scoops him up and gives Jon a look over the cat’s head.

“Right, because you’re so good at knowing when to stop — fine, fine, don’t scowl at me, I’m just saying if demons explode out of your forehead or something I _will_ say I told you so.” 

“It’s just a headache, Georgie.” Jon sighs. “A migraine, maybe? I don’t know, I used to get them —” 

“— at uni, I remember, you wouldn’t stop working on that paper and then you were sick. Well, don’t do that either.” 

“I’ll do my best.” 

Georgie rolls her eyes and abandons the effort for the kitchen. 

It’s not a lie, not really. He does have a splitting headache, one that makes his sight swim around the edges and the lights bore into his eyes. Any other day, he might take the chance to go lie down (although he hates the idea of taking Georgie’s bed, when he’s been at best a useless houseguest and at worst a dangerous one). But there’s something besides the headache, flickering and itching in his skull and making him restless. Something is missing, he thinks, but he can’t put it into words. 

The fluorescents emit a high-pitched whine that’s never bothered him like it does now, and Admiral is meowing at Georgie as she clatters around making lunch. Jon pushes himself to his feet. “I’m going out,” he announces, and leaves before she can ask where he’s headed. 

[CLICK]

“I mean, it’s not my job to take care of him.” 

“Miaow?” 

“Jon’s a grown man and if he trips into the street and gets himself killed that’s his problem.” 

“Miaow.” 

“Almost wish he hadn’t told me about the whole saving-the-world thing, though. Raises the stakes a bit.” 

“Mrrr.” 

[CLICK]

When Jon started walking, he didn’t have a destination in mind, just a vague idea of clearing his head. But he isn’t surprised to find himself back at the Magnus Institute.

He read an article about black holes, when he was a child, and he had known they pulled things in but he was still surprised to learn how they stretched spacetime around them, distorting reality like a heavy weight on a worn sheet, leaving planets, stars, light itself helpless to do anything but roll downhill. Now something like gravity is tugging him irresistibly towards the door. 

The analogy isn’t perfect. He’s been in and out of the building in the days since they confronted Elias, crossing the figurative event horizon at odd hours when he hopes no one else will be there. It’s midday now. Jon has no idea who’s in. The regular schedule might be disrupted, he suspects, by the revelation that their management are monsters and they’re all doomed. 

His office is windowless and blessedly quiet, except for — he frowns at the tape recorder, whirring on the desk. The tape’s whisper has started to become background noise lately, ever-present and therefore unremarkable. Maybe he started a new tape without noticing. It wouldn’t be the first time. Anyway he can’t help but notice it now, the low noise sandpapering away at his aching brain, and he switches the thing off. 

The whirring stops. He bends to retrieve a tape case from his desk drawer. The moment he takes his attention off the recorder, it starts up again with the usual plasticky click, almost pointedly. 

“I am not _recording_ anything,” Jon snaps at it, feeling like an idiot for talking to the thing. That strange absence, almost hunger but not, is wearing his patience very thin. “Do you know something I don’t?” 

Not ten seconds later, there’s a knock on the door. He glares at the recorder. 

“Jon, are you in here?” It’s Melanie. She opens the door and pokes her head in. “I thought I heard your voice — oh. You look … worse than usual. Should you be at home?” 

“Hello, Melanie. No one’s tried to kill me in the last twenty-four hours, so I’m on an upswing, really.” 

“Sure,” she says, doubtfully. “Er … I have some statements for you. From Elias.” 

Trying to focus on her wavering shape gets him nothing but a burst of nausea, but he can’t miss the unhappy way her mouth twists over the words. He doesn’t know why it hits him so hard. She has to keep up the act, he supposes, just as friendly and casually rude as ever, pretending that this is a normal job as she rearranges dead people’s stories and ferries messages from one monster to another. It’s that, or acknowledge the walls closing in around her. Maybe it could have been an easy pretense, if Jon hadn’t compelled the truth from Elias, dragging everything into the open to no effect but showing them what he was. God, his head hurts. 

“Just leave them,” he says.

Melanie opens her mouth to say something sarcastic, but shuts it at his expression. She drops the papers on the desk. “Alright,” she says, carefully biting off each word, “I’ll … just … go then.” And she does. 

Statements. That’s a novel idea. It’s been days since he took Jude and Mike’s statements, and Jude’s especially was more … advice. An unfriendly introduction to being an agent of a power from outside the world. It still makes him shiver, to remember how she and Mike talked of _feeding what feeds you._

_I don’t know how it would feel for you. Maybe you get an itchy eye? I don’t care._

Jon sits up straight.

Oh, he _is_ an idiot. What does Beholding feed on? Knowledge. Secrets. _Statements._ No wonder Elias was sending him mail — not just a leash to pull him around, but an offering to keep the Eye at bay. 

The absence in his head thrums in terrible harmony with his thoughts. 

He does hesitate. He doesn’t think he wants what Beholding wants. And that … weird hunger is frightening, unsettling in its inhumanity. But it’s harder to resist for the fact that, on what he hopes is still a purely human level, he wants to know. Are these statements another ploy, breadcrumbs meant to push Jon towards something he can’t see, or just a return to the Archives’ closest thing to a usual routine? Or does Elias know? Did he see this happening? Is this his idea of _helping?_

The recorder hisses on Jon’s desk. He forces himself to breathe evenly. He can work out Elias’ play later. But what will happen to him if Beholding turns its gaze inward … that’s one thing he doesn’t want to know, not first-hand. He twitches the top page off of the stack and examines it. The white of the paper is fuzzy and over-bright, bleeding into the letters so he has to squint to make them out. 

“Statement of Ellie… no. Statement of Elise Romero, regarding …” 

He shuts his eyes as his head swims. He has to read it. He has to. Bile rises in the back of his throat, followed swiftly by panic: if he can’t —

“Regarding her brother’s — god damn it.” 

He can’t. 

He should have listened to Georgie. She had been right about the stupid essay, too. Jon remembers the whole incident with unfortunate clarity, a miserable afternoon of staring at copy-blurred printouts through watering eyes and snapping at her until she gave up and left him to it. _I could write you an e-mail asking for extra time, I’m good at those,_ Georgie had said, and he had asked _Do you have to write a lot of them?_

He slams his hand on the desk. “You could have said something,” he hisses at the recorder, although Elias probably doesn’t need the tape to hear him. He feels so damned stupid, tired of the insistence that he work things out on his own when, clearly, he can’t. “Anything useful. For once. You keep saying that will ruin things, somehow, but surely this will — I mean, you have to be invested in me by now, don’t you?” He laughs bitterly. “You’d have to go out and find a replacement puppet, and that might be _inconvenient_ —” 

[CLICK]

“What, Jon’s here?” 

“Why do you even care?” 

“Leave him alone, Tim.” 

“I’m just saying, it’s not like him being here changes anything. Except the slamming doors and ominous muttering, and I could do without those.” 

“Is he … okay?” 

“What do _you_ think, Martin?” 

“God, will you stop it? Maybe you’d be less miserable if you weren’t being such a dick to everyone constantly —”

“Oh, but it’s my favorite coping mechanism.” 

“ _Anyway_ , I don’t know. He still looks like hell, that’s not a surprise. He acted normal when I went in, almost made a joke and everything, but then he got all weird. Seems like he’s in a mood. I’m not throwing myself on that sword. I’d say make Basira go talk to him if I knew where she was —” 

“Why doesn’t Martin talk to him, if Martin’s so worried?” 

“I … you know what? Fine, I —” 

[CLICK]

Jon wishes he had worn a scarf. The wide band of bruises around his neck, another record of Daisy’s attempted strangling, is fading into a sickly rainbow of yellow, green and purple. He knows it looks ghastly. He’s still taken aback by the wide-eyed concern in Martin’s eyes as they go from his throat to his bandaged hand back to his face. He crosses his arms, suddenly self-conscious. 

“I didn’t know you were in,” he says. 

“Well, I am scheduled for Mondays.” 

“Oh. Of course.” 

The light from the hall outlines Martin in a prickly-bright halo. Jon sighs and rubs at his eyes. “Did you … is there anything you want from —” 

“Is something wrong? With you?” The words tumble out all at once, cutting Jon off before he can finish his question. Then Martin turns red. “Not — not something _wrong with you_ , just, I don’t know, Melanie sounded worried? Well, she didn’t really, but that’s the thing, I know the others won’t ask and I just want to make sure that … that you know that … we’re here. Well, I am.” 

He squares his shoulders and meets Jon’s eyes, perfectly earnest. 

Jon can’t help it. He chokes on a laugh. There is something very, very wrong with him, and it is so far from anything Martin could possibly help with that the offer strikes him as absurdly funny. He puts his face in his hands and shakes, unable to make himself stop. He knows he’s being a bastard, but he’s overcome. Maybe if he’s enough of a bastard he’ll get his office back. 

After a minute he raises his head, hoping guiltily —

Martin remains in the doorway, looking unhappy but determined. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Fine,” he says. “Alright. I’m not blind, you know. I can’t make you tell me what it is, obviously, I’m not … no one’s giving me, you know, abilities.” He says the word so carefully, as if he’s handling something delicate. “But I’m not leaving until you give me _something_ to go on.” 

Jon blinks at him. It’s not even really a threat. On a different day, from anyone else … but he wants the questioning to end. And the light stings. 

“There’s … I …” 

What can he even say? Every explanation invites more questions, and he refuses to unravel the whole mess to Martin, whose trust in him must finally be nearing its breaking point. Selfishly, he wants to keep that unearned trust, a fixed point to rely on when everything else, up to and including his own humanity, has been pulled out from under him. He can’t imagine Martin would look at him like that, if he knew. 

“I need to read a statement, and I can’t.” 

Martin’s face has never hidden a thing. Jon watches him go from surprise to confusion and then settle back on stubbornness, and he knows the question is coming. “Er. Why?” 

“I have a headache,” he says, conscious of its total inadequacy as an explanation. 

“I could run out and get you some aspirin—” 

“That’s not your job.” 

“Keeping you sane is probably in the job description at this point,” Martin says with a nervous laugh. Jon doesn’t smile. “Sorry. I just … wanted to help. Things’ve been difficult for everyone lately but, um, no reason to be miserable if you can avoid it.”

Neither of them can avoid it, really; Martin even less so, trapped here as he is. The silence hangs between them and stretches under its own weight. Jon thinks, clearly, _that’s your question answered, you can leave now,_ and then doesn’t say it. It doesn’t make sense, but he feels fractionally more human: still awful, but it’s a little easier, now, to ignore the feeling of something pressing on him through the skin of the world. Maybe that dread can’t coexist with something as thoroughly normal as being irritated with Martin—

“I could read it?” 

Jon doesn’t mean to react, but his expression must be fierce, because Martin actually takes a step back. He composes himself. “That … wouldn’t be safe,” he says. He doesn’t want to consider what those prayers to Beholding would do to Martin, when everything seems to hit him so hard. 

“I have been,” Martin replies. Jon stares at him. “Started after you, um, left, and then Elias told me I should keep going because — well, it doesn’t matter, the point is I’ve done a few now and I’m fine, really!” 

Martin’s usual cheer sounds brittle, but these days that could mean anything. He looks … normal, now that Jon takes the time to look. Maybe a little thinner, or a little more tired, but certainly not consumed by eldritch forces. He looks perfectly human, as always, his shirt slightly wrinkled and his ears still pink with embarrassment, his hair sticking up at the back where he always runs his hand through it. 

Jon is caught in indecision as his mind pulls in several directions at once. He doesn’t even know what Martin reading a statement would _do._ He can’t believe he’s considering it. Most pressingly, he can’t imagine what would lead Martin to offer, when Jon has refused to give him anything but the most obscure of explanations. 

He could just ask why.

Martin leans forward and puts both hands flat on the desk, interrupting his hesitation. “I want to help,” he says. “It’s my job. Stop — stop getting all tangled up in thinking and let me do it.” 

There’s something unfinished about that statement, further words left buried: Jon can feel them, is sure he could reach out and pull them free. For the first time, he sees something in Martin that he can’t identify, and it itches at him. But there is steel in Martin’s expression, too, and it reminds him suddenly of the incident with the corkscrew. His scars throb. Martin had saved them all, when Jon froze. 

He lets out a long, unsteady breath. “Alright,” he says. 

“Alright,” Martin echoes. He pulls back and then stops, hands hovering at his sides as if he doesn’t know where they should go. He looks full of the unsteady caution of a man who has been leaning his whole weight into an obstacle and finds it has vanished. “Er, I’ll just take this then and — sorry! Sorry —” 

Jon’s hand is over Martin’s on the recorder. He moved it without thinking. Martin stills as if the fingers on his are a bear trap about to snap closed, and for a moment all his nervous motion stops. 

Then he sputters into speech like an engine that won’t start: “It’s just — I’ve been recording them in here, but, um, I don’t want to — with you here I don’t know if — I mean, I can find another —” 

“No, stay —” 

The words fall into sudden quiet as Martin stops mid-word to stare at him. 

“Ah,” Jon says, dumbly. He pulls his hand away. “It’s. The sound quality. It’s better in here, there’s less … interference…” 

It’s been a long time since Jon had any illusions about his ability to lie. That never seems to stop him, reflexive and panicked and trying to escape, and now the panic comes flooding back, cold all down his spine. He opens his mouth. 

“Okay,” Martin says.

The new lie withers on his tongue. “What?”

Martin pulls out the other chair with a painful scraping noise and sits down. “I’ll record in here,” he says, even though Jon _knows_ that he doesn’t believe him, that he has no reason to act out this absurd scene. Not knowing what else to do, Jon wordlessly pushes the statement at him. 

Martin taps the stack of paper on the desktop, carefully lining up the edges: a ritual or a way to stall, Jon doesn’t know. His hands are broad and squared-off and he handles the pages with such care, as if creasing them would be disrespectful. He’s always been kinder, that way. Never stupid enough to doubt there was something real there. 

Jon stands up. He can’t bear it, seeing too much from much too close, everything too present and overwhelming and pounding at his head. So he takes the three steps to the side wall and settles himself against it — not out of sight, just in the periphery, where he can pretend more easily that he’s only an observer. Martin, ever accommodating, doesn’t look up. He gives the papers a last tap and clears his throat. 

“Um, okay. Recorder’s on? Great. It’s been on this whole time. Wonderful.” 

It’s as if Jon isn’t there. He tips his head back against the wall and closes his eyes in relief. 

“Martin Blackwood, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, recording statement oh-one-five-sixteen-oh-four, statement of Elise Romero, given April 16th, 2015. Regarding…” 

The pages shuffle.

“Regarding her brother’s disappearance following a dispute with his academic advisor.” 

He starts to read. 

[CLICK]

“I want to say something about Caroline was always weird, but that probably isn’t true — hindsight, right? No, to me she just seemed like your average severe female academic type, you know, short gray hair, very disciplined, dressed nicely enough in a don’t-notice-my-clothes way. No patience for people who didn’t take things seriously. I never saw her smiling, except when she was talking to Ben about their research. We got on fine at first, since I knew how much my brother wanted us to. But I started to hate that smile, because every time they made a breakthrough with their stupid theory something new would go wrong …” 

The air in the office is heavy and still. Jon wants to deny any preternatural sense, but he can feel the statement, or _something_ , pulling at him: he keeps slipping away and coming back to himself with a start, like blinking yourself asleep and waking up disoriented. He tries to look at nothing in particular, but his attention is drawn persistently towards Martin, and whether that is from some dread force or simple curiosity he doesn’t know. 

“ … we used to tease him about having a crush on her, mostly because of how red he would turn whenever anyone —” 

Martin can’t possibly see him looking, hasn’t taken his attention off the statement since he started. All the same he breaks off, coughs, clears his throat before he begins again. 

“Whenever anyone brought it up. But I don’t think that was it, I mean, there certainly wasn’t anything sexual between them. I think he just liked her — but that doesn’t have enough weight. I think he really saw who she was and because of that he trusted her, more than she deserved. It doesn’t matter how clearly you see someone, if you won’t admit to yourself what you’re seeing…” 

His voice steadies and settles, which would be a relief, except that as Martin sinks back into the words he grows pale and still, a faraway not-there look in his eyes. Of course Jon has heard Gertrude reading statements, in her recordings, but it’s different, seeing it — and besides, Gertrude was the Archivist. He doesn’t know if she looked like this, or if he himself did, in the early days when he surfaced to Sasha or Martin’s interruptions. He can’t but think that if he had, someone would have made him stop. 

He doesn’t make Martin stop. 

The story takes up too much of his mind for that, as it pulls him under. He learns about Elise Romero, whose brother is certainly dead or worse, and the pressure on him ebbs.

“ … She used to give him a lift home from their office, sometimes, when it rained. Before things got weird she would come in and chat with us. But she stopped that pretty quick when they started arguing, so I was surprised to hear two sets of footsteps, and both of their voices, coming in the door on one dark, rainy afternoon.

“I was upstairs in my room, working on this indexing thing — it doesn’t matter. I thought about coming down, but when I heard the way they were talking, I decided I’d rather keep out of it. Ben never would have shouted, of course, but he had this bitter, sulking tone in his voice that he always got if he couldn’t squash things down well enough to pretend he was okay with what was going on. I didn’t really mean to listen, but those walls never helped anybody keep a secret, they were so thin. So I could hear pretty much every word even though I tried to concentrate on my work. 

“She was saying something about not needing his help, and Ben said _like hell you don’t_. I remember, because he hardly ever talked that way, especially not to her. His voice sounded strange, too … like he was in pain. I assumed he was just upset. Caroline didn’t sound sympathetic when she said, cold as anything, that he certainly couldn’t help her if he was dead. 

“That was enough to send me running down the stairs. Of course with the lights off and my car in the shop they must not have known I was home, and Ben froze like I’d caught him at something. Caroline just took another sip from her mug like nothing was amiss.

“No one said anything, and I just stared at the strange tableau in our kitchen. That was when I realized Ben was injured —” 

Jon watches Martin, but he doesn’t see him. He sees Elise and Ben and Caroline, standing in the kitchen and beholding something strange and new and fascinating. Caroline standing on the precipice of enlightenment and pressing on, needing to _know_ no matter what sacrifice might be asked of her, not seeing that she might be made to sacrifice other than herself. 

His eyes fall closed again. The story goes on. He sees each moment behind his eyelids and knows he is gaining something from them, or something is gaining through him. He can’t bring himself to care which. What does it matter if the satisfaction is his, if it fills that sucking void? The knowledge is an offering for Beholding, and he beholds it, and it is for him too. 

He hardly notices the way Martin’s voice hitches and almost breaks, as through him Elise brings the story to its inevitable conclusion. That is, he notices, but it doesn’t matter. He is too far gone, here and not here, seeing and not seen. 

“I never saw my brother again.

“I see Caroline around sometimes. She looks fine, of course. Not a tremor in her composure, not an ounce of visible regret. The scars on her hands have healed so cleanly that you wouldn’t notice them if you didn’t know to look. She’s … untouched. Distant, as always.

“I haven’t tried to talk to her, because I think I might hit her, and, well, it wouldn’t be worth it. If she doesn’t know what she did already, then me shouting at her wouldn’t help. I hope she knows. I hope she knows it’s her fault that Ben is gone, even if he _volunteered_. I hope she thinks about it every day, that she should have made him leave whether he wanted to or not. But she’s always been sure of herself. So I doubt it.

“Statement ends.” 

[CLICK] 

The headache and the hunger are gone. Jon is floating, coming down through a sort of unexpected supernatural afterglow that has never followed a statement before. Later, he will wonder what caused it, whether it was only that he hadn’t been drained by reading it himself or if it was … something in the way the reading was for _him,_ a thought that makes him nervous because it seems vaguely sacreligious, snatching offerings from the temple altar. For now, he is not yet worrying; for now he is marveling in how clearly he can see, and the way everything in his sight limned with faint golden light. Around Martin it coalesces in irregular patterns. He would swear there are words in the light, the alien shapes of letters on the edge of becoming intelligible. 

Martin, exhaling like he’s been punched, Martin pale and shaking as he slumps in his chair. _Shit._ “Are you alright?” 

“No,” Martin answers immediately, face minutely slackening, and Jon realizes it’s the first time he’s compelled him. Martin pales further and says, “No, I mean, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” 

“You aren’t,” Jon says. He doesn’t need unreadable words to tell him that. Doesn’t think he would have needed the compulsion. The remnants of his euphoria have vanished: it was poison-sweet, undeserved, a reward of parasitism. He is hurting people — undeniably he has hurt Martin — and it should not come as a surprise, because he is a monster and what monsters do is draw people in and consume them: _come a little closer, said the spider to the fly_.

Martin stands, and wavers. Jon catches him by the arm before he can fall, hatefully steady on his feet. This time Martin doesn’t freeze at the sudden touch. He just looks up at him and tries to smile. “You look better,” he says, his free hand twitching upwards and stilling. 

There is something trying to claw its way up Jon’s throat. “You don’t,” he snaps. “You said you had done this before—” 

“I have!” 

“And that it didn’t hurt you!” 

“It goes away after a bit, Jon, it’s not that bad.” And that smile again, made ghoulish by the deep hollows under his eyes, by the lie. 

Jon wants to kill Elias for letting this happen, and doesn’t feel much more charitably inclined towards himself. “Why—” 

“I told you why.” A nervous laugh almost escaping into his voice. Martin’s eyes flick to the door and Jon releases his arm, automatically. But he can see that light about to unspool into his understanding, and he has never been good at letting things go; maybe if he knows enough, maybe if he unravels this question, he’ll work out how to stop. How to fix this. How to let Martin rest, how to make everyone stop getting hurt because of him. 

“Why would you hurt yourself to help me?” he says, and this time he laces the compulsion into it on purpose. 

In this state he can almost see it in the air, curling around Martin’s wrist where Jon gripped it, around his throat, which moves as he tries to resist. “Because I care about. People.” Still Martin fights it; the words don’t come in time with his breath, they are pulled from him in spasms. “I want to help you, I mean I want to be helpful, I want —“ His hand searches for the doorknob behind him, but his eyes are fixed on Jon. “Can I go? Please?” 

He looks afraid. Jon drops the compulsion and backs up into the desk. 

“I don’t know,” he says. He can hear his voice starting to rise in panic. “I don’t know, I don’t know what you won’t tell me, or what I, I should do —” 

The light around Martin spikes and reshapes itself. “You could say thank you,” he says, and it is almost gentle, but his voice hardens as he goes on. “And trust me, when I say I’m fine, and stop _digging_ , haven’t I proven — no, I know, you can’t trust anyone, not here! I thought — never mind what I thought. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know everything, Jon, you don’t.” 

This effort seems to have exhausted him totally, and he slumps. “Is there anything else?” 

“You can go,” Jon says. _That’s your question answered. Now you know._ And he was right: Martin doesn’t look at him the same way at all. 

[CLICK]

“I told you it would only put them in danger, to rely on them.” 

“I know.” 

“Still, a novel approach, if one I wouldn’t recommend repeating, for poor Martin’s sake if nothing else —” 

“Elias.” 

“Hm?” 

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” 

“Don’t … pretend to be concerned.” 

“I don’t think you can claim any authority on that subject, Jon.” 

“…” 

“I’m proud of you, really. Every inch the Archivist. And now that you know, you can keep yourself in better shape, yes? Good. And will you be back here tomorrow?” 

He will. 

**Author's Note:**

> title is borrowed from dessa's hook in "the wren": 
> 
> i found your pale-faced, blue-lipped god  
> beneath the kitchen table  
> starving, and eating paper  
> he showed me what you wrote, and what you'd asked: love  
> nothing can live on prayers like that, love
> 
> Thanks to luckydicekirby, Rodent and OnnaStik for helping me as I wrote and listening to my many, many, many thoughts about this podcast!


End file.
